As soon as I throw my weight behind an idea, it becomes mine. It's in the disclaimer you automatically agree to when posting on my blog.

Except I never posted it there, but in here.

Though honestly, I was mostly joking there. You did give me proper credit on your blog, and the amount of time you spent on writing it down in detail with proper and constructive arguments probably weights higher than the initial 2 lines I posted about the idea.

Well, to be fair, no-one ever said that there is zero problem with Flex. As long as some raiders feel "forced" to do Flex, something's not right.But, there are way more solutions than just lock everything up until it's a maze to navigate.

K.I.S.S.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

The scenario I put forth earlier in the thread isn't going to be uncommon at all. Player logs on on Tues/Wed, has an opportunity to run LFR with a friend or two. They may have a scheduled Flex raid later in the week, or may have plans to try and find a PuG on the weekend. If Flex and LFR share a lockout, they have a decision to make, because they can't get loot from both. Either they say no to their friends in order to be eligible for loot in the guild raid, or they have a complicated risk assessment problem to solve regarding their likelihood to find a pug later in the week.

The point here is that this reduces the flexibility and accessibility of both formats. This is a big deal, and basically a dealbreaker for the lockout idea. Insisting that most guilds can handle the scheduling part is missing the point, and doesn't address the pugging issue at all. The Flex and LFR formats are designed to be accessible, period. That's Blizzard's #1 concern with these formats, and in fact the reason they exist at all.

This is nowhere near as common as you're making it out to be for these reasons:- For the player in the guild, you're assuming he/she is at a level where the guild is literally going to full clear Flex from start to finish (something Thels has been arguing won't be a norm; I disagree, but that's a different debate entirely). Because if that isn't true, the player already has an idea that wings 1 and 2 are on the table, and wing 4 is free to PUG right now on Tues/Wed. More importantly, the argument against a "opt out of loot" button has basically been "It'll be too hard for a player to click a checkbox on the UI when going to the UI to queue for LFR and select role anyway", which isn't a technical limitation or a problem surrounding this choice.

- For the player who will PUG, his choice isn't whether he can do LFR with his friend or find a pug later. He can absolutely find a pug right now for Flex, with his friend. He can find a pug or do LFR for specific wings with his friend, knowing that pugs are going to be targeted at wings as well because it's Flex and a Flex pug can hop in and start wing 4 when he looks for a PUG on Sunday, unless you posit that Flex is also going to be so easy that a pug will full clear from start to finish, even though pugs by nature will have people breaking off here and there because Flex is winged, and will have players who've already done wing 2 and some have done wing 3 etc.

You're also ignoring the upgrade path - part of the reason that LFR/Flex don't share lockouts with each other or normal/heroic is to provide a fallback on the gear path. If a guild is struggling at Normal, they can go back to LFR/Flex to pick up some upgrades to get them over the hump. Similar argument applies to going back to LFR if you're struggling with Flex. It's also related to the reason that there's no Valor gear in 5.4 (again, see Watcher's CTR interview).

Again though - this is Flex. A guild stuggling at any level CAN jump into the lower mode and continue on with the instance. Because they can resume from being stuck at Blackfuse by going directly into his wing, and not having to clear from Immersus first. They can then move on and get the Flex gear from Blackfuse all the way up to Garrosh to "get past the hump". Koa is not ignoring the fallback option; because the fallback option isn't removed. If they've cleared Normal Immersus for that week, the only loot they won't be eligible to reget would be from Flex Immersus, and given that they're clearly capable of Normal Immersus, capable of Flex beyond Immersus, and getting loot for Flex beyond Immersus, there's no slowdown for the gear to get over the hump.

Flex has to remain accessible to all of those players, and anything that significantly impacts a large part of the population is off the table, period. That's why you will almost certainly never see any sort of shared raid lockout between LFR, Flex, and Normal/Heroic. Their stance on that is pretty firm, and it's based in sound game design principles.

It absolutely has to remain accessible to all of those players, but right now suggestions that it wouldn't be accessible under a system he likes focus on a very niche set of conditions that have to be true (his entire point is that players at a certain level are in fact free to do things at their level, including mix and match Flex and LFR), and then claiming that that represents a large part of the population.

Blizzard's stance has actually avoided making claims like that (thankfully). Their stance is actually more that, for now, that they think that most people will like totally not bother after a few weeks because everyone loves gating as a solution, AND that they think that players who don't have Heroic Upgraded items are good candidates for using Flex loot as a supplement AND they think only "real hardcore" raiders will do it regularly beyond when they've killed that boss on Normal mode, and as a result of THOSE assumption, this represents a small enough pie that it's smaller than the niche set of conditions up there ^.

As a principle, it's "sound", if you believe that those assumptions are true. They do, so that's what drives their decision.

It's entirely possible that after the initial stabilisation that comes with the creation of a new mode, they will actually embrace the concept going forward into the future.They've also been extremely specific that they will be keeping an eye out to see whether Flex will be too "mandatory" or not, to hedge the whole anything could change - such as if those assumptions don't hold true.

Last edited by Darielle on Fri Aug 30, 2013 8:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

Darielle wrote:the guild is literally going to full clear Flex from start to finish (something Thels has been arguing won't be a norm; I disagree, but that's a different debate entirely).

If Flex is intended to be cleared in one go, it's basically LFR2 without a matchmaking system, and then my proposed solution to the entire problem would be for Flex to DIAF, because it adds nothing whatsoever to the game.

If Flex is intended to be cleared in one go, it's basically LFR2 without a matchmaking system, and then my proposed solution to the entire problem would be for Flex to DIAF, because it adds nothing whatsoever to the game.

I both hope and think that that's not the case.

I think it does add something to the game - a promotion for coordination between players and setting up communities as opposed to what we currently have in antisocial queuing that has no real repercussions for being afk. Bearing in mind that while Flex will be easy, it won't water down mechanics AS much and it won't have Determination afaik.

But anyway, the major point of that is that if you don't believe it's true, then the entire concept that players will have to make conflicting decisions falls flat. Because there IS no "Do LFR or Flex", there's "Hey, let me do the other wings now".

Darielle wrote:the guild is literally going to full clear Flex from start to finish (something Thels has been arguing won't be a norm; I disagree, but that's a different debate entirely).

If Flex is intended to be cleared in one go, it's basically LFR2 without a matchmaking system, and then my proposed solution to the entire problem would be for Flex to DIAF, because it adds nothing whatsoever to the game.

I both hope and think that that's not the case.

Surely there's a million variables that determine how fast or slow a group will clear flex. I personally expect to be clearing flex all in one go, but bot everyone will have that expectation or approach it with that mentality.

Darielle wrote:Bearing in mind that while Flex will be easy, it won't water down mechanics AS much and it won't have Determination afaik.

Just looking at some of the datamined numbers from Icy Veins Flex damage output is 60% to 80% of normal, but I'm not really able to see a pattern, AoE vs Single target and avoidable vs not avoidable, to how the scaling is decided.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

Darielle wrote:- For the player in the guild, you're assuming he/she is at a level where the guild is literally going to full clear Flex from start to finish

No, I don't think that's an implicit assumption in my statement at all. You could analyze it on a wing-by-wing basis, especially since the wings are gated ("Hey Bob, LFR wing 1 just came out, want to run it with us?" ; "Sorry, can't, I might be doing Flex wing 1 with my raid group on Friday").

Darielle wrote:- For the player who will PUG, his choice isn't whether he can do LFR with his friend or find a pug later. He can absolutely find a pug right now for Flex, with his friend.

Not unless putting together a Flex pug is faster than queuing for LFR. If a handful of friends want to queue up for LFR and invite you along, they're probably not interested in organizing a PuG just because you don't want to lose your loot lockout.

I'm not sure there's much else to argue here. I see plenty of cases where extra restrictions on loot lockouts just get in the way of having fun. So do most of the other friends-and-family-guild types that I talk to. Blizzard sees them too, which is why those loot lockouts don't and aren't going to exist.

Darielle wrote:- For the player in the guild, you're assuming he/she is at a level where the guild is literally going to full clear Flex from start to finish

No, I don't think that's an implicit assumption in my statement at all. You could analyze it on a wing-by-wing basis, especially since the wings are gated ("Hey Bob, LFR wing 1 just came out, want to run it with us?" ; "Sorry, can't, I might be doing Flex wing 1 with my raid group on Friday").

It's the nature of LFR to run with whatever group, or lack thereof, you have. Bob sitting out of LFR doesn't impact anyone in any way. His friends are not prevented from running LFR. Heck, if Bob is a nice guy, he might invite his friends to run Flex with his guild instead of condemning them to run LFR.

No, I don't think that's an implicit assumption in my statement at all. You could analyze it on a wing-by-wing basis, especially since the wings are gated ("Hey Bob, LFR wing 1 just came out, want to run it with us?" ; "Sorry, can't, I might be doing Flex wing 1 with my raid group on Friday").

The moment you don't have that assumption, the entire scenario of 'get in the way of having fun' breaks down though, hence everything else following that quote.

Not unless putting together a Flex pug is faster than queuing for LFR. If a handful of friends want to queue up for LFR and invite you along, they're probably not interested in organizing a PuG just because you don't want to lose your loot lockout.

Flex IS meant to be easy/quick to find. That's a compound of server merges (Virtual Realms) as well as the promotion of the community aspect of the game through Flex, as well as whatever they're discussing with making cross-realm groups easier to find and put together.

The entire idea of the lockouts not being a problem seems to hang on that "You can just as easily jump into Flex, rather than LFR." If that were true, there would be no point in having Flex, as it would more or less be an LFR2.

That's cause you are overestimating the average skill of WoW players Tera.

Something that for you is a joke, like LFR durumu, or LFR lei shen, or similar encounters in the past, for the average wow player is "too hard and should be nerfed", and they usually complained so much that they did get nerfed to a retard-proof version.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Teranoid wrote:I still don't understand how you think a raid that falls between LFR and Normal is going to have any semblance of actual difficulty but hey that's also probably why this thread is reaching 40 pages.

The thing is, if it doesn't have any semblance of actual difficulty, wouldn't it just be a 2nd LFR? They could chance LFR to scale with players, so that if you queue for LFR with 10+ players, you get your own LFR, rather than it getting filled up to 25 players.

Instead, they're putting it up as a second difficulty, and since LFR is already the "retard proof zero challenge" version, Flex needs some challenge.

If you run an Ironman challenge every week (after doing a warmup marathon the first week of the season), of course you can't see that there is room for a difficulty between the 10km weekly running route and a halfmarathon - both are equally easy to you (you did a full marathon just to warm up). However if you can' manage to run that full marathon each week (you know, your warmup), then there is definately room for a half marathon, despite there also being a 10 km run.

Also, that half marathon can be quite challenging to someone who only does the 10km run previously, especially if you have to participate in or actually go look for a route for the halfmarathon, instead of just jumping in on the established route for the 10k (you just have to wait for a run to get started).

I can't help thinking the ilvls are all wrong. For people with heroic content on farm for a while wont care much about it.

It's the guilds that were only partially cleared on heroic or the new members of established teams that I feel sorry for, they will get forced to run all.

When we trial people we expect them to show motivation to the teams progression and that includes gearing up outside raids. If they don't run all content, it will be hard not to question motivation. Which would be unfair on them but hard not too feel that, if they are holding you back by poor output from gear.

I have to shine the light inward sthere stevos. If that is what you are expecting, you should take a look at what your expectations do (and whether they are beneficial in the first place) to applicatns, but also the raid team.

I get the "this trinket/weapon/X is so OP that even a lower ilvl version is better than your current higher ilvl X" running. But expecting people to gear up outside raids (what is that btw? LFR is a raid too, and the only one you can reasonably expect people to have acces to while not in a raidgroup) isn't necessarily a sign of commitment (besides the point of it tiring out people).

I must say my guild views people in the same light, if you're applying you'll have need to have made all the effort you can. The fact that scenario's/rep/crafting provide better gear than lfr atm anyway usually means that lfr level gear wouldn't be considered appropriate.

Nooska wrote:I get the "this trinket/weapon/X is so OP that even a lower ilvl version is better than your current higher ilvl X" running. But expecting people to gear up outside raids (what is that btw? LFR is a raid too, and the only one you can reasonably expect people to have acces to while not in a raidgroup) isn't necessarily a sign of commitment (besides the point of it tiring out people).

Gearing up outside of raids means gearing up outside of the guild-run raids. That's valor capping, running LFR or any other level of raiding that the guild isn't running, getting crafted gear, getting rep gear - basically using your free time to gear your toon as well as you possibly can in order to maximize your potential.

Reputations and LFR clears are commonly looked at for applicants to progression raiding guilds in addition to gear, because they are indicators of work done outside of raids. If you are in such a guild, you are expected to do what you can to maximize your performance. You should have capped professions, maxed reputations, multiple LFR clears, etc. that show you don't just log in to raid then play alts the rest of the week.

When Flex comes in, if the progression guild is only running a norm/heroic raid, then you are expected to run the LFR and Felx version in order to get the gear to maximize your performance in the guild raid.

See thats the disconnect.How can you expect people to run organized raids outside the organized raids?Flex is not something you simply jump in to.It may be that flex PUGs become normal, but expecting everyone to have access to a flex PUG is back into teh unreasonable territory.

Also, I get the "show commitment" thing, but realistically, running LFR or not won't make any measurable impact on the performance of an applicant, since the chance of useful gear is rather low anyway.

I do get the drive to do so, and I do get the psychological fallacies that make "us" expect other people to do so, but I maintain that the issue t here is inwards, not outwards.

Nooska wrote:See thats the disconnect.How can you expect people to run organized raids outside the organized raids?Flex is not something you simply jump in to.It may be that flex PUGs become normal, but expecting everyone to have access to a flex PUG is back into teh unreasonable territory.

Also, I get the "show commitment" thing, but realistically, running LFR or not won't make any measurable impact on the performance of an applicant, since the chance of useful gear is rather low anyway.

I do get the drive to do so, and I do get the psychological fallacies that make "us" expect other people to do so, but I maintain that the issue t here is inwards, not outwards.

Well, this is where we fundamentally disagree. I think there will be tons of opportunities to run Flex based on guilds propping up numbers, merged realms, PuGs, and the like, whereas you see it as something that must be scheduled and organised.

People PuG norm modes now, so the idea that Flex would be too hard to PuG is just silly.